Vegetables

A fun potluck party idea is to have a zucchini fest. People can be so creative; you’ll discover zucchini dishes you never dreamed of. I’ll never forget going to one several years ago and someone had thought ahead and brought a gluten free chocolate zucchini bread. Too many times, we forget the many who don’t eat gluten (wheat products).

My busy gluten free neighbor Vanessa shares this recipe – gluten free chocolate zucchini bread. It is so yummy and rich, it can be treated as cake. This is a proven winner recipe; it won’t last long in the pan! Enjoy the zucchini season while it lasts…and lasts…..and lasts!

If you have already pulled up your garden, don’t worry. I’m sure someone has excess in their garden. Just put out the word that you will make some gluten free chocolate zucchini bread for them if they will give you some of their zucchinis. If you find this too late, make plans for various zucchini plants next spring. There are many varieties to choose from at your local garden center.

September is the special month of the year that is set aside to celebrate the wonderfully dependable, always reliable potato. This solid side dish performer works with almost any meal and if you planted potato starters in the spring then you should have a harvest ready to be served up this the fall. Mashed potatoes are always a solid side dish but if you’re looking for something different here are six ideas for side dishes this month as you celebrate the potato!

Hashbrowns – Who says that hashbrowns have to stay put on the breakfast menu? Try serving them at dinner and adding in bell peppers, onions, and your favorite spices for flavor. Serve the hash browns with a traditional dinner menu or make it an evening of breakfast. It’s always a good time for pancakes and bacon!

Funeral Potatoes – A Utah classic, funeral potatoes are a satisfying comfort dish for any occasion, even a weeknight family dinner. Potatoes can be diced, sliced, or shredded before you add them to the recipe. This potato dish can be as simple or as elaborate as you want to make it, the varieties are endless. Here’s a basic funeral potato recipe from Lil’ Luna to get you started if you’ve never baked this comfort food before!

Baked – You can’t deny the simple, great taste of a baked potato. Toss the potatoes in olive oil and kosher salt before baking and they’ll come out of the oven crisp on the outside and warm and fluffy on the inside. The beauty of the baked potato is that each family member can create their own. Whether it’s with simple butter and salt or fully loaded with sour cream, bacon, cheese, and green onions, everyone will have a say in how this potato dish is made.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Grilled – While the weather is still warm outside you may not be in the mood to use your oven to cook potatoes. If that’s the case you can always grill them. Grilled potatoes are an excellent choice when you’re already planning on grilling meat for dinner. Slice or dice the potatoes and then put them in a foil packet. Don’t forget to spray the foil with non-stick cooking spray to prevent the vegetables from sticking to the sides.Add in bell peppers and onions or cheese and bacon, depending on your taste preference. Seal up the foil packets and place them on the grill earlier than your meat as the potatoes will take longer to cook.

Photo Credit: Food Network

Potato Salad – Potato salad isn’t only a dish for summer potlucks! If you find yourself in the mood for a potato side dish but want something a little lighter, try a potato salad. You can stick with the traditional recipes or try one that’s eggless, or a version that uses red potatoes and vinegar.

Potato Wedges – Celebrate the potato with homemade potato wedges. They are about as family friendly as you can get. Wedges can be served with simple, kid friendly main dishes or fancier adult fare. While cutting the potatoes can seem like a chore, in the end the homemade taste will be worth it! Try this recipe from Our Best Bites for oven fries and experiment with the different seasoning.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Enjoy the month with your homegrown potatoes, but if you didn’t grow any, plan ahead for next spring. Western Gardens carries in the spring a variety of only the best potatoes to grow in your own garden. You will be able to celebrate the potato even more next September.

Hello! I’m Jenn from Housewives of Riverton and am so excited to be here with you today. Did you know that August 8th is National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day? I am absolutely loving these different national days and have so much fun coming up with ways to celebrate them.The funny thing about National Sneak Some Zucchini onto your Neighbor’s Porch Day is, what person (who has a garden) isn’t going to be over the moon excited to celebrate this day. I mean, if you were to start putting some of your zucchini abundance onto all your neighbor’s porches on just a random Tuesday people might think you were weird BUT make it a national day that you can include on a fun note and it’s perfectly acceptable to share the zucchini love!As I was thinking of different ways to celebrate this fun holiday I started thinking of some of my favorite zucchini recipes. I think zucchini bread has to top the list, I like to pretend it’s completely healthy because it has quite a bit of zucchini in it, perfect for those days when I’m dieting. I don’t want to make National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day a chore for you so I am not suggesting that you make zucchini bread for all your neighbors but you could include a recipe for zucchini bread (or cookies, cupcakes, brownies…there are so many delicious zucchini recipes) along with the needed amount (or more) of zucchini. You may just introduce them to a new favorite recipe.
To help make this day and the giving easier for you, I’ve created this fun free printable for you to include with your bounty. CLICK HERE to print it off! I think that cute smiling zucchini would make anyone’s day brighter, he just seems to scream “Hey you, I was thinking about you today!” and everyone loves to be thought of.
I say plan ahead, don’t let this fun new holiday sneak up on you, collect your zucchini abundance, print out a few of our free printable and maybe a recipe or two and hit the neighborhood on August 8th and bring a smile to the faces of your neighbors!
If you’re looking for a fun new way to eat your zucchini you’ve got to try our Zucchini Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting or our Applesauce Zucchini Bread both are serious crowd pleasers and are sure to have your friends and family asking for more zucchini from your garden! Check out our National Zucchini Bread Day recipe as well.

The calendar may still say “Summer” but believe it or not, it’s time to start thinking about planting your fall garden!I tend to think of planting my garden as a springtime activity but there are many plants that thrive in cooler conditions and will produce a harvest of healthy foods. Here are five green veggies that you can plant now and enjoy when sweater weather truly kicks in!

Broccoli- Broccoli is a cool weather crop that can take approximately 50-70 days to mature. It grows well in areas that get at least six hours of daily sunlight and have well-drained soil.Broccoli does very well when it is planted in late summer and allowed to grow through the fall.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Cabbage –Another cool weather vegetable, cabbage varieties can take anywhere from 55-100 days to grow to maturity. When choosing your variety, it’s important to look at your growing window and the predicted frost dates for your area. Like broccoli, cabbage does best in locations with sunlight and well-drained soil.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Lettuce – Lettuce is a quick growing vegetable that thrives, and often tastes better, when grown in the fall.Lettuce plants will grow the fastest in full sunlight but unlike other fall garden vegetables, they can also tolerate shade. Lettuce can be grown in small spaces or containers but it’s important to make sure the soil is well-drained

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Spinach – Spinach is another cool weather crop that does well in the Utah fall. Spinach plants prefer full sunlight but will tolerate partial shade. Spinach is a fast growing plant and will yield many leaves in the mild, cool, fall weather.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Swiss Chard – Swiss Chard is a plant that can be left in your garden without worry when light frost begins to appear. The leaves from Swiss Chard will add interest to your fall salads. Growing the plant in cooler weather, instead of in the high heat of summer, helps the plant avoid gaining a bitter taste.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Your local independent garden centers, like Western Gardens in Salt Lake City and West Valley, Utah, will have the varieties of seeds and seedlings that will do well in the Utah climate. Plan now and come see us.

Welcome Gardening Friend! Glad you dropped in.

Was 2017 the year that you planned to finally get your family garden up and running? Maybe now you’re realizing that it’s July and all you have is a bare patch of soil and good intentions? Not to fear! You still have time to enjoy a fall harvest andmake it a family affair! Here are some ideas of vegetables to plant in July and August in your garden.

Here are four fruits and vegetables that are fun to grow, yield a quick crop, and make gardening with the family easy and fun!

Tomatoes: Since tomatoes need to be planted after the danger of frost has passed they’re a possible choice for mid-summer planting. When July’s summer heat kicks into high gear, you’ll want to take precautions to protect the plants from the hottest part of the day, plus plant on a cloudy day or in the evening after the worst heat. Shade coverings, mulch, and adequate & consistent watering will help your tomato plants take off. When starting tomatoes later in the summer it’s also important to select a “short season” variety, one that will be ready for harvest before the fall frost arrives. There are also some heat tolerant varieties as well, like Grape, Heat Wave II or Fourth of July.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Peppers: Although pepper plants take longer to mature than other vegetables, their fruits can be fun for children (and adults!) to watch as they grow and change color. You’ll find varieties of pepper plants that have Days to Maturity time of 60-70 days. Examples: Orange Blaze, Gold Standard, Jalapeno Gigante, or Big Guy. Chick here for more. Your garden center will also have some seeds and maybe some plants still available to browse through. Find one that your family will enjoy eating, as well as watching! Remember that some varieties of peppers must be handled with care as they leave a residue on the skin that will cause irritation.

Photo Credit: Wiki Media

Pumpkins: Plant pumpkin seeds now and reap some jack-o-lanterns in the fall! But you better hurry! Pumpkins generally require 75-100 days to maturity. Check the variety! Hopefully we won’t have a frost until late October. Your children can watch as the seeds grow into vines that will creep throughout your garden. When selecting your pumpkin seeds, think about the size of your available garden space. You’ll want to choose between between a variety of tiny pumpkins or larger ones that are best suited for carving jack-o-lanterns. No matter what you decide, pumpkins are fun and easy to grow and their seeds make a delicious, roasted treat in the fall.

Photo Credit: Public Domain Pictures

Radishes: Radishes are a terrific addition to the family garden because they are colorful, quick growers. Children can expect to pull up their first crop just a few short weeks after planting the seeds – a very quick garden turnaround! Your family will enjoy watching as the tops of the radish greens emerge from the soil. When they are about one week ole, radish plants should be thinned to approximately two inches apart a job that children can do after some instruction and coaching. Fast growing spring varieties of radishes should be planted when the weather is still cool. However, winter radishes can be planted later in the summer as late as mid-August. They take longer to grow but will still provide your family with the satisfaction of planting a seed in the ground and pulling a vegetable out of the dirt!

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

The 2nd Planting List: Come on in to Western Gardens for an extensive list of vegetables and herbs that can still be planted in July and August. To name a few on the list: arugula, cauliflower, carrots, cabbage, and many many more.

Welcome, Friends! Glad you’re here for some tips to organically manage those pesky harmful garden insects so you’ll have produce left to harvest!

All yards and allotments will have harmful garden insects every year; it’s part of nature.These insects need to eat in order to feed the beneficial insects.Eliminating ALL the harmful insects from your garden would be time, labor, and resource intensive. You also run the risk of depleting the food source for beneficial insects and other animals that feed on the harmful critters.

Wise Goal – An important and wise goal is to control the harmful garden insects enough to reduce the damage to your garden to a manageable level.Meaning that by harvest time, there is something left for you to eat.Losing one or two tomatoes is manageable and probably hardly noticed, but an entire decimated crop means there’s a problem to address.

Aphids – One year we had aphids on our herbs which was easily treated by spraying the affected plants with neem oil, a wonderful organic product found at Western Gardens.This significantly reduced the number of bugs.They were further kept at bay by some helpful ladybugs, also found at your garden shop.

We were careful to thoroughly wash our herbs before eating them to remove any remaining aphids. Washing anything you harvest before eating it is always a good idea anyway.

Leaf Miner – Last year, our challenge was leaf miner larvae on our Swiss chard.In this case, we simply discarded any leaves that had been extensively chewed.Otherwise, we snipped off the parts that didn’t look as appetizing, like anything that had a visible egg attached to it (usually on the underside of the leaves), washed everything, and then enjoyed our tasty green salad.

This year, now that we know to look for the leaf miner eggs on the leaves, we were more attentive with our starts for our garden and inspected them daily, looking for them or other harmful garden insects.We found eggs on our pepper plants and did our best to remove them when the plants were small.We used a piece of duct tape wrapped around a finger to remove the eggs.

We found that using a gentle fingernail was still too rough for the tender young leaves, so gently touching the tiny eggs with the sticky duct tape easily lifted them off.

Once the plants were more mature and could withstand a little insect activity, we were less vigilant at egg removal, but still mindful of looking for eggs once in a while.

Squash Bug – This year, we planted pumpkins for the first time.We had heard of the dreaded squash bug and had been looking for them but hadn’t seen any damage to the plants.Then, just last week (late June), one of our pumpkin plants was nearly devoured overnight by something.

We assumed it was the infamous squash bug.This assumption was reinforced when, upon closer inspection of the plant, we found a mating pair of squash bugs with a third one waiting on the side-line and eggs attached to the underside of the remaining leaves and the stem. We posted photos of the damage to a Facebook gardening group and learned of some other likely culprits.That night my husband went out with a headlamp and a bottle of neem oil to investigate.

Earwigs – Someone suggested the damage looked like the work of earwigs.My husband found several earwigs eating on the plant and a swarm of them hiding in a nearby crevasse. Earwigs are a complicated insect in the garden.They are not only harmful, but also beneficial.They aid in breaking down organic matter (composting) and they also eat aphids and other harmful insects. However, when there are too many of them around a young susceptible plant, they can be very destructive.We could also see evidence of earwigs damage on a few leaves of nearby tomato plants.This minimal damage doesn’t pose a risk to a plant that has hundreds of leaves to perform.In comparison, the pumpkin plant had only a dozen leaves to start with and most of those were very damaged.

My husband sprayed neem oil on the earwigs on the plant, in the swarm nearby, and even in their nest. It’s still uncertain whether the plant will survive though it already shows signs of new growth. We monitor it closely to prevent another insect attack that would probably kill it.

Another organic alternative that works to kill earwigs is diatomaceous earth, which also now offers a nice dispensing bottle which helps cut down on waste and mess.Check it out at Western Gardens.

As for the squash bugs, not the main culprits to the pumpkin plant, they were probably snacking on it also.We’re still removing eggs as we find them (using the duct tape trick mentioned above) and killing any adults.Their numbers can quickly get out of hand. Again, diatomaceous earth works well to control squash bugs.

Beneficial vs Harmful Insects – Lady bugs, praying mantis, and birds are a few examples of creatures that feed on the harmful garden insects; hence, we like to see these around around the yard.When considering how to handle any harmful garden insects, the first reaction should generally not be total annihilation.Rather, try to reduce their numbers and also allow the beneficial insects and animals to do their part until the plant is mature enough to withstand the damage.

WELCOME Gardener, Happy to see you here checking out a delicious Homemade Ketchup Recipe for all those tomatoes you are growing!

Are you looking forward to summertime and all the amazing foods summer brings? I love picnics and bbq-ing, basically anything that allows me to eat outside and on dishes I don’t have to wash afterward. One consistent condiment is ketchup, it seems like ketchup goes with just about every summertime meal.
I love trying new recipes, especially recipes that are simple and include items I always have on hand. Every year we plant a variety of tomato plants and I enjoy using them in the summer and fall. Unfortunately half of my family are not tomato lovers so I find myself giving tomatoes away so they don’t go to waste. This year I am determined to learn how to can tomatoes so I can use them all year round and they’re perfect for this Homemade Ketchup Recipe.

Homemade Ketchup Recipe INSTRUCTIONS:

*Place all ingredients into a medium-size pot.*Bring ingredients to a boil over medium-high heat. Once boiling turn down and simmer for 60 minutes.*After 60 minutes remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.*Once cool pour into blender and blend until smooth.*Pour into air-tight container and place in refrigerator for up to 14 days.
While this recipe isn’t the quickest it is quite possibly the simplest recipe you’ll find out there and it is delicious. I highly recommend making it a couple of days ahead of time, if you can, the more time the flavors have to blend the better it will taste. I love the rich flavor, I personally love that you can taste more of the tomato flavor and my family all loved it, even the tomato haters, so you don’t have to worry that the flavor is too strong.
I’m excited to bring this delicious ketchup to all our summer gatherings, I can’t wait to try it in homemade fry sauce too!
If you’re planning a bbq this summer or attending one, you need to try one of these amazing salads that are serious crowd pleasers!Mom’s Potato SaladChicken Pasta Caesar SaladSpinach Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

Welcome Gardening Friend! Glad you dropped in.

When we first started growing tomatoes several years ago, I didn’t know the difference between heirloom and hybrid tomatoes. I had heard about heirloom tomatoes and wondered what that meant.To me, an heirloom tomato sounded like some prized family possession (like great-great grandma’s china plates) or some secret family seed (like that secret family recipe for chocolate cake) that had been passed down from generation to generation. Basically, it made them sound unattainable without a special connection to someone from a family that had been growing tomatoes for countless generations. That was my impression.So, I simply went about my business of buying tomato starts at the local garden centers.I didn’t hear the term “hybrid tomato” until a few years ago.Hybrids were the kinds of tomatoes I’d been growing but didn’t know it.

As the push for more natural and organic ways of producing food has been growing, the market for heirloom tomatoes has become much more mainstream.One can buy packets of certain varieties of heirloom tomato seeds at pretty much any gardening center and starts for heirloom tomatoes can also be found in more locations.

But really,

What’s the difference between heirloom and hybrid tomatoes?

One way to define an heirloom tomato is a variety that has been passed down within a family or has been around for at least 50 years (though it seems there is some controversy about how old a variety of tomato needs to be in order to be considered an heirloom1 ).Some heirlooms are recorded as having been cultivated for hundreds of years or more.

An HEIRLOOM TOMATO is one that has been selectively reproduced for certain characteristics, perhaps a certain trait that is best suited for a growing region or a certain color or flavor. It may be the best one for canning/bottlings because of its acidic content. Or maybe a variety that is huge and juicy, where one slice fills an entire sandwich! Some varieties of heirloom tomatoes include Black Beauty, Brandywine, Chocolate Stripes, Green or Red Zebra, Big Rainbow, and many more. As the names would suggest, heirloom tomatoes come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and flavors.

Many would argue that heirloom tomatoes are more flavorful. I have personally grown Brandywine for several years and can attest that they are delicious and juicy.They also can grow to be quite large, but the same vine could also produce medium or smallish fruit.They are not completely consistent in size, but always tasty!

A word of caution: Watch your heirloom tomatoes and don’t let them over-ripen on the vine.Since the colors of an heirloom can vary so much from what most people are used to, like that “tomato red” we all see on hybrid varieties we buy at the grocery store, it can be quite easy to not know an heirloom is ready for harvesting until it’s too late.Read up on the particular heirloom tomatoes you choose so you can be aware of what to watch for to assess ripeness.

Since an heirloom tomato is one that has been specifically selected over generations of plants for its traits, it is possible to take the seeds from a tomato grown in a home garden and use them to grow that same variety during the next growing season.(IMPORTANT NOTE: If your heirloom tomato cross-pollinates with some other variety of tomato in your garden, you will end up with seeds that are not true to the original plant.If you’re interested in preventing this from happening, there are guides on how to prevent cross-pollination.)

A HYBRID TOMATO is one that is the result of intentionally cross-pollinating two different varieties of tomato.This means the “child” plant will have characteristics of both of the “parent” plants.These tomatoes can be very hardy, disease resistant, and produce fruit that is consistent in size and shape. Being disease resistant is probably the biggest and most important benefit. There are few things as frustrating as growing a big beautiful plant, have lots of fruit forming, then get a plant virus that destroys your crop.

Some popular varieties of hybrid tomatoes are Big Beef, Cherry, Sweet 100, Early Girl, Better Boy, and Grape.

The biggest difference between heirloom and hybrid tomatoes…

…is what kind of 2nd generation fruit will grow from this year’s plant. You can’t be certain what kind of tomato will grow from the seed of a hybrid.Often the seeds are sterile and will not sprout at all.In the event that they do sprout, they probably won’t be the same as the plant you harvested them from.We planted a Cherry tomato two years ago and had lots of volunteer plants growing in that area of the garden the next season.We let a few of them grow and found that the plant produced fruit that was pea size, or smaller!They were delicious but a real pain to harvest.

Be sure to check your local independent garden shop, like Western Gardens in Salt Lake City, to find the most popular varieties that will do well in your climate and area. The locals will have the biggest variety and most unique varieties for you to enjoy.

Either way, the difference between heirloom and hybrid tomatoes may not matter to you. Nevertheless, whichever you chose to plant in your garden, they have one big thing in common: they are designed to be eaten and enjoyed!

Each year as we get to the last few weeks of winter, my husband and I watch for the first day when it is warm enough for us to work outside in our garden for a few hours so we can plant peas. We can’t wait to get them in the ground! Though along the Wasatch front, we typically don’t plant until March, we’ve planted them as early as mid-February (straight in the ground; no greenhouse) and still had great success. Peas are a cool weather plant that needs little attention beyond watering and harvesting. They tolerate snow and light frost so don’t be afraid to plant peas early.

KIDS & PEAS … Planting peas is a great activity to do with young children. The seeds are a real bonus to work with:

They are large enough that they are easy for small fingers to pick up.

They are also easy to find after the inevitable spill.

Planting is as simple as sticking your finger in to the ground, dropping in a seed, and covering with soil.

Again, the size of the seed made this something I could do with my 18 month old. She has helped plant every year since and even gets upset if she thinks she’s being left out of the planting process for the peas.

Fun idea to see and eat the peas the children grow. That is if you can get any that far into the house from the garden!

FRESH PEAS IN THE GARDEN… My husband will only eat shelled peas that are freshly picked from the garden. If they’ve been cooked, frozen, canned, or otherwise tampered with, he will not touch them. (He’ll eat snap peas in stir fry). When our daughter was very young, we’d go out in the garden to pick peas and she’d eat as many as we’d give her. Her preferred method was eating them straight out of our hands. She will still eat as many as she can get her hands on, but she’s big enough to do the picking and shelling on her own now.

OUR FAVORITE VARIETIES…We’ve tried lots of varieties of peas over the past several years (Green Arrow, Alaska, Snap Peas, Little Marvel, Blue, and more) and have found that our favorites for flavor and abundance on the vine are Little Marvel (a shelling pea) and Snap Peas (edible pods, no shelling required). We also grow Blue shelling peas because their flower is so beautiful. If you’ve never seen a blue pea, the flowers are purple and white and the pea pods are a dark purple/blue color, making them easy to find on the vine. Buy quality seeds from your local garden center like Western Garden Centers in Salt Lake City and West Valley, Utah.

DID YOU KNOW… Peas are one of the oldest known vegetables. Archaeologists have found them in ancient tombs at Troy and Thebes. Dried peas keep indefinitely. This allowed them to survive the ocean voyage to become one of the first crops grown by English colonists coming to North America.

DID YOU KNOW… Peas are “nitrogen fixers”, meaning they take nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it to ammonia (which is chemically comprised of nitrogen and hydrogen), thereby making the nitrogen available to other plants and organisms in the soil. This means peas are a great spring crop because they naturally help fertilize your soil prior to planting other garden fruits and vegetables that need nitrogen in order to thrive (think tomatoes!).

TIP: To maximize this benefit, at the end of the peas’ growing season, trim the plant off at the soil line instead of pulling them out, leaving the roots behind.

GROWING TIP … A friend suggested presoaking the peas prior to placing them in the soil. This will soften the seeds and allow them to germinate more quickly. Soak for around 12 hours, no more than 24, before planting. We tried it this year because we wish our peas would sprout sooner. It worked! Our peas were sprouted and broken through the soil less than 10 days after planting them, instead of 2 weeks or more. We look forward to eating our peas that much sooner this year!

FALL PLANTING … After the summer heat is gone (about Labor Day), plant peas again for a fall crop. Read the package of which variety will produce according to the time you have.

Welcome Zucchini Lovers. Celebrate with us!

You are just in time for National Zucchini Bread Day! If you included zucchini in last summer’s garden then there’s a good chance that your freezer is well stocked with leftovers from last year’s harvest. This easy to grow squash is notorious for producing more crop than gardeners know what to do with. If you still have a ziplock bag, or two, of frozen zucchini hanging around then you’re in luck! Now is the perfect time to defrost your zucchini leftovers because April 25th is National Zucchini Bread Day.

Photo Credit: Flickr Commons

Who doesn’t love an excuse to celebrate a national food day? With zucchini bread you have a way to satisfy your craving for warm carbohydrates while also getting in a serving of vegetables. Not to mention fiber! It’s always a plus when your fiber comes in the form of delicious bread. As an added bonus you’ll be able to either use up freezer leftovers or have an excellent excuse for finally starting your garden.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

If you don’t already have zucchini in your freezer, don’t panic. Pick up the produce at your local store and use fresh zucchini in your bread recipe. Then head to the garden center for seeds and celebrate National Zucchini Bread Day by planting something that you will enjoy both in a few months time and at next year’s celebration!

Quality seeds for a successful crop! Choose varieties that will thrive in your area.

Mid May happens to be an excellent time to plant zucchini seeds because the ground has begun to warm up. You can also begin your seeds indoors, but if you want to direct-seed and avoid transplanting then it’s best to wait until the soil temperature measures around 60-degrees. Check with your local independent garden center to know when it is ideal for planting your seeds. In Utah along the Wasatch Front, gardeners remember Mother’s Day as the time when the rest of the garden can be planted. Cold crops can be planted as early as March. Zucchini is definitely not a cold crop.

Photo Credit: Flickr

In the fall, if your plants have done well, you will most likely find yourself giving away zucchini. To friends, neighbors, coworkers, maybe even strangers. Even after all that generosity you should still have plenty of zucchini left to freeze for the following year. Preserving the squash is easily done. Wash the zucchini in cold water, pat it dry, then cut off both ends. Use a cheese grater to grate the plant and then store the grated zucchini in a well-labeled ziplock bag in the freezer. The vegetable should keep in the freezer for approximately eight months. Which means you’ll be prepared and ready to bake when National Zucchini Bread Day comes around again!

Click next for a simple delicious Banana Zucchini Chocolate Chip bread recipe. It will please everyone!